The 9 billion-people question?

This report focuses on “the 9 billion-people question”, and presents most of the factors affecting food production today. A short report can be forgiven for not including all details, or for just giving an overview. Yet we were struck by its contradictions. Throughout the report, its author argues that the world needs to produce more food in order to feed a growing population (and yield increases should at least keep pace with population growth), but “if Western waste could be halved and the food distributed to those who need it, the problem of feeding 9 billion people would vanish”.

The important contribution of fertilizers is also stressed, and “Africans could double yields by doubling their fertilizer use”. Probably, if these would be available. But “making fertilizer is energy intensive, so unless oil prices fall, increasing food production by slathering ever more fertilizer on the land would be inefficient”. And excess fertilizer in China “run off into rivers, gathers in lakes and produces toxic blooms of algae [while] the ‘dead zone’ of the northern Gulf of Mexico is caused largely by overuse of fertilizer in the American Midwest that is making its way down the Mississippi”.

the only reliable way to produce more food is to use better technology

Readers are told that “The second main source of growth will consist of spreading a tried and tested success: the ‘livestock revolution’, switching to closed ‘battery’ systems in which animals are confined to cages and have their diet, health and movement rigorously controlled”. Yet we also read how “turkeys are so bloated that they can no longer walk, chickens grow so quickly that they suffer stress fractures”. And if we shouldn’t be worried by animal welfare, then we read that “new infections and diseases are appearing at the rate of three or four a year, and three-quarters can be traced to animals, domestic or wild. Avian flu is just one example”. Was this always so?

Another section refers to the genetic improvement of plants by means of new technologies. On the one hand, the author presents genetic engineering (GE) as one of the 'silver bullets' to feed the world, since “it allows faster and more precise breeding”; but on the other hand he recognises the difficulties in developing GE plants. Furthermore, the author completely forgets to take into account the socio-economical consequences that the application of this type of technology can involve. The reduction of the costs for the development of these seeds is mentioned in the report (“the cost of genetic identification will soon stop being a serious constraint”), but not much is said about the prices that farmers have to pay for using them. But “traditional and organic farming could feed Europeans and Americans well. It cannot feed the world.”

“Agriculture is itself a big contributor to climate change…”, “… much of the methane in the atmosphere comes from cattle ranching…”, “the rivers that water some of the world’s breadbaskets, such as the Colorado, Murray-Darling and Indus, no longer reach the sea…” Readers are also told of new pests and diseases, yet “the reaction against intensive farming is a luxury of the rich”. Is it?

It is good to see that the report concludes on a positive tone: “the world is at the start of a new agricultural revolution that could, for the first time ever, feed all mankind adequately”, but there is little to show that this revolution is not “more of the same”. .. If “the only reliable way to produce more food is to use better technology”, as one of the headings state, then we should make sure that we go for these better technologies, and not insist on those which have failed.

Read The Economist: A special report on feeding the world online or download the PDF.

Text: Nicola Piras and Jorge Chavez-Tafur